TeX, LaTeX and Friends

David Carlisle

12:15 AM

@JosephWright, @egreg @UlrikeFischer comments welcome, github.com/davidcarlisle/dpctex/tree/master/shellesc

egreg

@DavidCarlisle Heiko is more paranoid in checking if commands are primitive.

David Carlisle

@egreg I know, and about catcodes (I am not convinced that that is the correct thing to do:-)

@egreg I don't see the point (and that's one reason his packages fail in luatex 0.85, because the expected primitives are not primitive so even if you give effective macro replacements the tests still fail)

egreg

@DavidCarlisle I'm not convinced about the \lastsavedimageresourcepages test.

David Carlisle

@egreg random new command at luatex 0.85 I could pick another (well not quite random, that one has a really new name, not just an old name with pdf removed, so is highly unlikely to exist anywhere else)

egreg

@DavidCarlisle Why not testing the meaning of \luatexversion? Probably the LaTeX kernel should include \ifluatex and \ifxetex to begin with.

cryingshadow

12:31 AM

0

A: Question about exercise 23.3 in TeXbook

This is the combined answer from the comments below the question: The last \ifnum checks whether the penalty for inserts on the current page is larger than -20000, i.e., if there are too many inserts held back, and does a supereject, i.e., places all inserts on a suceeding page if this is the ca...

David Carlisle

@egreg because you have to then test if luatexversion exists and if it does test the number, which is tiresome.

cryingshadow

Just another community wiki answer.

David Carlisle

@egreg we've considered that (and the l3 code essentially does that but even if it did you'd still need two tests, one for luatex and one for the version, unless the kernel set luatexversion to -1 or some such for any non-luatex engine)

egreg

@DavidCarlisle \if\engine@is@luatex{<numeric test>}<true>\else<false>\fi

Good night

David Carlisle

@egreg good night. I'll think about that when less tired:-)

crocket

2:48 AM

Why does \index{quote (\verb|""|)} lead to an error?

crocket

3:04 AM

0

Q: Why does \verb|""| in \index{} lead to an error?

\documentclass{article} \usepackage{index} \makeindex \begin{document} \begin{figure} \centering \fbox{Diagram placeholder} \caption{\index{quote (\verb|""|)}ok} \end{figure} \printindex \end{document} LaTeX said ERROR: Argument of \@caption has an extra }. What is wrong?

egreg

10:25 AM

@crocket Because you must never use \verb in the argument to another command.

David Carlisle

@crocket really any documentation that told you the command \verb existed would have said in the second sentence that it can't be used in the argument of a command.

egreg

@DavidCarlisle With \string it works, but it's the wrong way.

David Carlisle

@egreg well since it seems to be " then (most of the time in English) you don't need anything at all:-)

egreg

@DavidCarlisle A typewriter font seems to be needed.

David Carlisle

10:41 AM

@egreg that could be arranged:-)

@egreg do you know anything about this, Frank just mentioned it in a discussion about uniocde setup ctan.org/pkg/interchar (it looks fairly sensible:-)

egreg

@DavidCarlisle Seems quite similar to ucharclasses

David Carlisle

@egreg let me look...

@egreg "v2.0: rewritten by Enrico Gregorio" :-) the documentation of that one in the ctan catalogue is all about font switching rather than specifically about different xetex schemes, but I suppose can come to the same thing in the internals

@egreg we were looking at @JosephWright's code for reading class information straight from the unicode data files and wondering exactly what information is useful in tex, so packages using xetex inter-char tokens came up....

egreg

@DavidCarlisle I just streamlined the code a bit, because the original version used tons of \ifthenelse. Do you know who wrote that macro?

@DavidCarlisle ucharclasses is surely among them. It doesn't read from Unicode files, but it could, I guess.

David Carlisle

@egreg Leslie wrote the first version, someone else made a valiant but ultimately futile attempt to improve it whilst keeping the syntax.

crocket

11:04 AM

The above picture is from page 175 of Kottwitz S.-LaTeX Beginner's Guide-Packt Publishing (2011).

The picture says

And don't worry, " itself may be used within verbatim text as follows:

\index{quote (\verb|""|)}

How should it be fixed?

egreg

@crocket Well, it's wrong. ;-)

crocket

How should it be modified?

If I wanted to insert " in an index entry, what should I do?

David Carlisle

@egreg not if it isn't in caption (as index reads its argument verbatim)

egreg

@crocket Didn't I show you in my answer?

David Carlisle

@crocket unless you are using a babel language that uses " for shortcuts " is not a special character in tex so doesn't need special treatment at all

egreg

11:17 AM

@DavidCarlisle \index{quote (\texttt{""})} is much better.

crocket

ok

David Carlisle

@egreg yes

@egreg although "" looks horrible even in tt :-)

crocket

What does \string do? tug.org/texinfohtml/latex2e.html doesn't explain what \string does.

egreg

@DavidCarlisle Just one " will survive in the index

David Carlisle

@egreg oh yes, OK:-)

crocket

11:19 AM

Two "s appear as one ".

A plain " doesn't survive.

David Carlisle

@crocket well you could change that, but yes, by default.

crocket

What does \string do?

Faheem Mitha

This is probably an obvious error. Too obvious to post. Maybe someone can tell me what I'm doing wrong?

\documentclass[landscape, 12pt]{scrartcl}
\usepackage[absolute]{textpos}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{fouriernc}
\newcommand{toaddress}[3]{
\begin{textblock}{5}(0.3,3.4)
\noindent
(#1)\\
#2
\end{textblock}
\begin{textblock}{5}(6.1,6.5)
\noindent
#3
\end{textblock}
}
\begin{document}
\end{document}

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha \newcommand{toaddress} seems to be missing a backslash

@egreg I leave it to you to add the % ^^

egreg

@crocket The problem is that \index writes to an auxiliary file. When \index is not in the argument to another command, the macro is able to absorb the argument “verbatim”, so no issue arises. In the other case, it's not possible, so \texttt or \verb are expanded. With \texttt there's no error, with \verb there is!

However, using \string in front of the command, either \texttt or \verb become innocuous strings when the text is written in the auxiliary files. And the benefit is that no space is added.

crocket

11:25 AM

I inserted \verb in \index outside \caption. The index entry didn't appear.

You should see the typeset result.

egreg

@crocket As a rule, use \verb only if there's no other possibility. Unless you need to typeset verbatim macro names or unbalanced braces, it's easier with \texttt.

crocket

By the way, \caption{\index{quote (\texttt{""})}ok} works

David Carlisle

@crocket yes because it doesn't use \verb as said above:-)

egreg

@crocket No. You do need \string or the entry would be considered different from an \index{quote (\texttt{""})} command not in the argument of \caption or other command.

@crocket If you try my example after removing \string, you'll see.

@crocket And don't index terms in captions.

crocket

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{index}
\makeindex
\begin{document}
\chapter{First Chapter}
\section{First Section}
\begin{figure}
\centering
\fbox{Diagram placeholder}
\caption{\index{quote (\texttt{""})}ok}
\end{figure}
\printindex
\end{document}

This one is fine

Where do I index terms?

David Carlisle

11:31 AM

@crocket yes but see egreg's comment above it will be wrong if you make another index entry to quote or if you have a \tableofcontents

crocket

Where should I put \index?

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Missing a backslash where? I don't see it. Yes, I see %s tend to be sprinkled around in these defns, but I'm currently hazy about what it does. Maybe I knew at one point.

David Carlisle

@crocket see tex.stackexchange.com/questions/176439/…

@FaheemMitha \newcommand{\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\toaddress}

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Oh, bugger.

Thanks.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha maybe I added too many, but one would be good

Faheem Mitha

11:36 AM

@DavidCarlisle Yes, I got the idea.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha % just comments out the rest of the line

@FaheemMitha :-)

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Yes, but sometimes it's required in definitions. To stop extra whitespace creeping in, or something.

David Carlisle

xxx
yyy

is

xxx yyy

xxx%
yyy

is

xxxyyy

@FaheemMitha % is never required but sometimes people add space where they don't want to add space so it is easier to tell them to comment it out than to remove it

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Ok.

@DavidCarlisle Yes, that's the usage I've seen. TeX adds an blank char for newlines.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha so you should have % (at least) after the first { and after the `\end{block}

crocket

11:40 AM

Is it ok to put \index next to \caption if \caption contains the indexed term?

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha people expect to get spaces between words.

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Yes, I realise it's a reasonable default.

David Carlisle

@crocket better to put it in the caption but you need to use the optional argument to caption so you don't index the table of contents (but egreg said that already)

crocket

@DavidCarlisle That sounds like a weird workaround.

David Carlisle

@crocket why?

crocket

11:43 AM

Using the optional argument to avoid the issue is a workaround.

It is not beautiful

Faheem Mitha

Together,
\documentclass[landscape, 12pt]{scrartcl}
\usepackage[leftmargin=40,rightmargin=40]{mdframed}

switch the document to landscape format. But the first line by itself doesn't. (I'm not currently using mdframed). What missing ingredient is being added by mdframed, and why?

Hmm, replacing mdframed by a call to rotating, but I don't know why.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha classically landscape just changes the typeset area (\textheight \nd \textwidth) because tex has no notion of the page size (the margins just depend where you print the text block on a physical page) but the graphics package if using a driver eg pdftex that does know about page size sets that

@FaheemMitha mdframed and rotating both load graphics

egreg

@FaheemMitha This prints in landscape format:

\documentclass[landscape,12pt]{scrartcl}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\begin{document}
\lipsum
\end{document}

David Carlisle

@crocket since you want different effective text in the two places, it is the most natural. You can move the \index but then if for example you use hyperref to make back active links from the index to the main text the links will go to wherever you put that command, not to the word that is being indexed

crocket

My LaTeX book didn't tell me the caveat with \index in \catpion.

egreg

11:56 AM

@crocket Blame the author. ;-)

David Carlisle

@crocket \index in any argument has issues, not just \caption

crocket

Other than typos and mistakes, the book felt fine.

Do you recommend better books?

Kottwitz S.-LaTeX Beginner's Guide-Packt Publishing (2011) occasionally teaches bad practices and contains typos.

like \index in \caption without the optional argument.

Putting \verb in \index.

David Carlisle

@crocket all books occasionally teach bad practice and have typos, they are written by human beings (that one being written by one of the site moderators here:-)

crocket

Due to being the first edition, I found 18 mistakes so far...

Faheem Mitha

@egreg Well, it's trying to. But it runs over both pages because the page didn't get rotated.

crocket

12:03 PM

Some books do not contain noticeable mistakes in their 2nd editions.

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle So, what's the recommended package to add? \usepackage{graphics}?

crocket

Like "how to prove it, 2nd ed" by velleman.

egreg

@FaheemMitha What do you mean?

@FaheemMitha Are you perhaps using latex+dvips+ps2pdf?

David Carlisle

the latex companion documents this section 11.1.8 says: When an \index command is used directly in the text, its argument is expanded
only when the index is typeset, not when the .idx file is written. However, when
the \index command is contained in the argument of another command, char-
acters with a special meaning to TEX, such as \, must be properly protected
against expansion. This problem is likely to arise when indexing items in a foot-
note, or when using commands that put their argument in the text and enter

Faheem Mitha

@egreg No, pdflatex.

I haven't used latex+dvips+ps2pdf for years.

egreg

12:08 PM

@FaheemMitha I get two pages in landscape format; what did you expect?

Faheem Mitha

@egreg It's printing in portrait format (the default) here. What am I missing?

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha do you mean actual printing, on paper? or do you mean when you view it it is clipped?

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle When I view it. I haven't tried printing it. To be clear, I'm talking about egreg's lipsum example.

At any rate, it appears in portrait format in the PDF viewer. And the words run off the edge.

David Carlisle

It also says

Package typearea Warning: Bad type area settings!
(typearea)                The detected line width is about 52%
(typearea)                larger than the heuristically detected line width.
(typearea)                You should e.g. decrease DIV, increase fontsize
(typearea)                or change papersize.

@FaheemMitha but for me without any changes pdftex makes:

crocket

Oh man...

David Carlisle

12:13 PM

crocket

LaTeX is becoming a complex monster.

The book presented only a bright side.

David Carlisle

@crocket it could be worse, you could be using Word:-)

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle No, I don't see that with xpdf and greg's example. Odd.

TeX Live 2014 here.

@crocket What book?

crocket

Kottwitz S.-LaTeX Beginner's Guide-Packt Publishing (2011)

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha 2015 here but I don't think this has changed for years

crocket

12:16 PM

It explains LaTeX as if there were no workaround in LaTeX.

Faheem Mitha

@crocket Oh. Yes, people can sometimes downplay difficulties.

I gather you're a relative newcomer?

David Carlisle

@crocket There is a clue in the title that it would not give full details of more complicated areas. What do you expect from a "beginners guide"?

crocket

I started learning LaTeX on nov 27 this year.

David Carlisle

@crocket i started in 1986 (and egreg before that:-)

crocket

I've read two thirds of the book so far.

David Carlisle

12:18 PM

@crocket Stefan's here now, you can complain to him:-)

crocket

yes

David Carlisle

@UlrikeFischer you ask for shell_escape to be in the status dictionary and so it happens:-)

crocket

@StefanKottwitz I've spotted 20 mistakes(bad practices and typos) in your book. I'll notify the publisher of the typos and mistakes after I finish the book.

Faheem Mitha

@crocket That's not very long. I've been using LaTeX since the mid-90s, and as you can see, I still don't know anything.

crocket

anything?

Does it mean LaTeX is changing fast?

For example, if \index is used in \caption, the optional argument to \caption should be used to avoid indexing terms in the list of figures or tables. But, the book doesn't explain that.

Faheem Mitha

12:23 PM

@DavidCarlisle Hmm. So you have no clue what's going on here? But you said you need to load the graphics package, and egreg's example doesn't load it eiher. Unless lipsum does.

@crocket Were you addressing me? It's not clear.

crocket

I did

Faheem Mitha

@crocket Ah. I'm not sure what you were/are asking.

crocket

You don't know anything. why?

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha well koma appears to set it directly (it's only setting \pdfpageheight and \pdfpagewidth so two lines you don't really need the whole graphics package)

Faheem Mitha

@crocket I meant I don't really understand how things work. I can use LaTeX to do basic things.

@DavidCarlisle Oh. So I shouldn't need anything else to see text in a landscape format?

David Carlisle

12:26 PM

@crocket why should it? It can't say everything same is true if you have a footnote in the caption

Faheem Mitha

@crocket I've tried to understand how TeX works, but it makes my head hurt.

crocket

Probably bad learning materials

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha maybe the 2014 koma didn't set that, adding \usepackage{graphics} can't hurt

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Ok, will do.

I get Page size: 595.276 x 841.89 pts (A4) from pdfinfo for greg's example.

David Carlisle

@crocket learning materials like "beginners guides" are by design not intended to explain how things work, just what a beginner should do. How things work should come from reference manuals or the source code

crocket

12:30 PM

By the way, I appreciate the beginner guide other than mistakes.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha I get Page size: 841.89 x 595.276 pts (A4) so i guess koma got updated. You could update to tl2015 you know, tl2016 will be out soon:-)

crocket

I hope the second edition gets it right.

Faheem Mitha

@crocket Yes, and TeX is not a particularly easy thing to understand the insides of. Nor is it easily debuggable.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha some of us manage:-)

Faheem Mitha

Some people see to like it, though.

But the experts make it look easy. :-)

crocket

12:31 PM

I'm beginning to understand how TeX/LaTeX is a local minimum.

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Yes, I see that.

crocket

Is there an easily debuggable alternative to LaTeX?

David Carlisle

@crocket not an answerable question.

Faheem Mitha

@crocket No.

Assuming you are talking about something even vaguely similar.

David Carlisle

@crocket most alternatives to latex are not debuggable at all unless you work for the company that owns the sources. word, in design APP (3b2) etc.

Faheem Mitha

12:44 PM

Oh, with the proviso that it be free. I don't know about non-free typesetting alternatives, because I would never consider them.

But I'm not sure if non-free typesetting languages like TeX exist.

There are lots of things you can use to produce documents, of course.

E.g. Adobe Framemaker.

And InDesign.

@crocket What is your use case?

crocket

Solving math problems.

I have to write solutions with mathematical symbols.

TexMacs proved inadequate for my need.

Faheem Mitha

@crocket Yes, in that case TeX is probably your best bet. Have you tried the alternative to LaTeX? I refer to ConTeXt.

But LaTeX is more mainstream.

TeX has the best mathematical support on the planet of any software designed for creating documents.

crocket

LaTeX is my best bet for writing solutions.

Faheem Mitha

Anyway, you'll get used to it. One does. On the plus size, its behavior is essentially frozen, so it won't change under you.

Paulo Cereda

Ouch let me write that again. :P

Faheem Mitha

12:53 PM

@crocket TexMacs isn't a typesetter, is it?

Stefan Kottwitz

@crocket Thanks, you can also send the typo list and best practice improvements to me if you like. I would be happy to make a new edition. I guess I can convince the publisher, since it's now 5 years old. I would have made some things differently today. My address is: stefan@texblog.net

Paulo Cereda

I think that I can say, working with macros for some time as research subject, that TeX macros are well behaved. There are far worse scenarios. :)

Faheem Mitha

@PauloCereda As opposed to?... PHP? :-)

Paulo Cereda

@FaheemMitha :P

Stefan Kottwitz

@crocket I just made a new book, but it's not perfect too for sure :-) The LaTeX Cookbook 1.0 you can see samples in a gallery, but also the whole code with all examples on latex-cookbook.net

crocket

12:57 PM

What

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle I'm still using Norbert's packages, though I wonder how long they will be around for. :-(

I could do a backport. I see he has 2015 in unstable now.

Does anyone know the situation with Debian re the TeX Live packages?

Norbert has been threatening to drop packaging, and if he did, I wouldn't blame him. But I like using Debian packages.

I've drunk the Debian Koolaid.

Does 2015 have lots of improvements over 2014??

crocket

1:19 PM

@StefanKottwitz Do you make living by selling books?

Stefan Kottwitz

@crocket No, that's not possible. There's not much to earn with books in such a specific area, even if a beginner's guide has a better chance than an advanced book.

@crocket I work as a network engineer. The books I wrote on evenings during about a year, each.

David Carlisle

1:42 PM

@FaheemMitha well more changes in the latex format than any release for the last 15 years, and a years incremental improvements to packages.

Faheem Mitha

2:09 PM

@DavidCarlisle "more changes in the latex format than any release for the last 15 years'? I thought 2e was in deep freeze.

@StefanKottwitz Hi. You must enjoy writing LaTeX books. You've written 2 now.

Maybe more?

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha we thawed it a bit see ltnews22 ctan.org/pkg/ltnews?lang=en

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Do you have a PDF handy? Or do I need to download and build it?

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha the pdf is at that link

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle See it now. Sorry, missed it.

Issue 22, January 2015, right?

David Carlisle

2:27 PM

@FaheemMitha yes they are all in one pdf these days 22 was in january and 23 was in October

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Ok. I see you guys have been a bunch of busy bees.

(I'd like to work a pun about LaTeX in there somewhere.)

Stefan Kottwitz

2:47 PM

@FaheemMitha Maybe :-) it's just hard with job and children to match deadlines

@FaheemMitha I don't invest much time on a book before getting a contract with a publisher, and then there are deadlines for each chapter and pressure comes

Faheem Mitha

@StefanKottwitz Yes, I see. But you don't make good money from your LaTeX books?

If so, that's a shame.

Stefan Kottwitz

@FaheemMitha It's some money so I call it good as an addition, but not enough for example to pay rent for the home

@FaheemMitha A TikZ cookbook would be nice :-) Though I had a lot of TikZ already in the LaTeX cookbook. But a focus on TikZ allows a lot of fine things.

Faheem Mitha

@StefanKottwitz Ah, yes. a TikZ cookbook. "Cooking with TikZ".

@StefanKottwitz Well some money is always good. :-)

Joseph Wright

@FaheemMitha This is all (broadly) my fault ;-)

Faheem Mitha

@JosephWright You mean, all your inspiration? Did you get much kicking about changed behaviors?

Joseph Wright

2:56 PM

@FaheemMitha Very little in the way of changed behaviours for end users, much more about latex.ltx knowing about engines post TeX3

Paulo Cereda

My cool plan of automatic rule update for arara has to be redesigned. :)

Faheem Mitha

@JosephWright Ok. So subtle changes, then.

Joseph Wright

@FaheemMitha Yes

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha some more subtle than others, the main change for end users (other than etex/luatex/xetex support) is all the fixes that used to be in fixltx2e are now in the format so 2-column floats fixed, many more commands made robust, etc

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Ok. Well, that's good. Thanks for the fixes.

Joseph Wright

3:00 PM

@DavidCarlisle OK, that part wasn't my idea :-)

David Carlisle

@JosephWright did you see egreg's comments above re ctan.org/pkg/ucharclasses?lang=en uses the blocks UCD file to split the ranges up roughly by script use...

@JosephWright you have the subtle ideas we just spend 20 years wondering if we should fix blatant bugs

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle I'll take a look over the code a bit later: family round until about 5-ish

@DavidCarlisle :-)

David Carlisle

@JosephWright OK. Meanwhile see we got another change into luatex:-)

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Family busy ATM: do you know where the 'informal Unicode blocks' come from?

David Carlisle

@JosephWright as far as I can make out, just within that package

Joseph Wright

3:10 PM

@DavidCarlisle I'm thinking we might want to have the current set up for east Asian chars marked as specificially for back-compatibility: something like load-unicode-xetex-legacy-classes.tex

@DavidCarlisle Plain can use that (no changes for plain users) and we can say that for XeLaTeX/LuaLaTeX 'we are working on a more useful scheme'. (I also wonder about picking up the LuaTeX emualtion of interchar classes)

David Carlisle

@JosephWright yes would be interesting to how far the xecjk settings differ from what can be deduced from the UCD data, whether they just use finer grained info from there or if they basically use other sources

@JosephWright might be a plan

Joseph Wright

@DavidCarlisle Yes

@DavidCarlisle OK, I'll adjust my loader stuff

Ulrike Fischer

4:59 PM

@DavidCarlisle Good-;) Saved me the time to try to convince them as I wanted to do after my return.

Telemachus

5:33 PM

I have a document that is (mostly) in English and (the rest) in Latin. (It's a text and commentary of a Latin book.) Is there a recommended way to adjust hyphenation rules for the parts that are in Latin? Googling gets me a lot of answers, and many seem out of date (or super complex or both).

David Carlisle

@Telemachus you should be able to use \usepackage[latin,english]{babel] (last named language is default) than just use babel commands to switch to latin as needed

Telemachus

@DavidCarlisle Sounds good. Thanks.

David Carlisle

@Telemachus see texdoc babel page 6 for switching languages, there are several variants depending whether switching whole paragraphs or just inline latin in an english para or ...

Telemachus

Yup. Thanks again. Since the parts that have extended Latin are pretty much all in one chapter I wrapped that whole chapter in a \begin{otherlanguage}...\end{otherlanguage} environment. It's working well.

Telemachus

6:27 PM

@DavidCarlisle Any particular reason that you recommended babel rather than polyglossia?

David Carlisle

@Telemachus because I started using tex in 1986, probably:-)

Telemachus

@DavidCarlisle And (I assume) it still works for you. That was my first guess. It's really just curiosity. Polyglossia seems to want to replace babel, so that made me wonder if (why?) it needed replacing.

As I said, babel is working just fine for me now, but I wondered anyhow. Not a huge deal.

David Carlisle

@Telemachus My linguistic abilities in this chat room are "legendary" (and strangely aligned with those of google translate) I have never actually used either package in a real document other than answering questions:-)

Telemachus

@DavidCarlisle "Linguistic abilities"? I don't think I follow. I'm definitely not using either to translate anything: just to hyphenate better. :)

David Carlisle

@Telemachus well let's say use of any language other than English

Telemachus

6:33 PM

@DavidCarlisle Oh, sorry, now I see. You write in English only. Hence don't need... Got it.

fahdijbeli

8:56 PM

Hello again

please who is moderator here ?

I would an advice from him/her

I send a request yesterday to merge an accidently user to my original user

but when I go to check it nothing is updated :/

David Carlisle

@fahdijbeli I seem to remember that account merging has to be done by stackexchange these days, site mods can't do it.

fahdijbeli

yes I know but, I thought that mods have another advice :)

is that take a lot of times to make the merge ?

David Carlisle

@fahdijbeli I have no idea, sorry, i just remember seeing Joseph saying once or twice when people ask that they should contact (somewhere, I forget where:-)

fahdijbeli

okay thanks David ;)

@Dav I think you mean this link stackoverflow.com/help/merging-accounts

David Carlisle

9:15 PM

@fahdijbeli yes I think so

fahdijbeli

yes I sent a request via it but I didn't have a esponse till now

the problem I am writing my final project of study

3

Q: Lyx: document cannot be opened

I am writing my very first serious Lyx document for end project of study. All was well and I was having fun until tonight when I tried to open it, it cannot be opened: Error says: Doesn't respond. What is going on? How can I fix this problem? I don't really want to start it over again. I ...

lyx

this is my post, I am stuk and I couldn't response :'(

David Carlisle

@fahdijbeli sorry can't help with lyx much (I don't even have it installed)

fahdijbeli

thank you

David Carlisle

@fahdijbeli as the comments say, can you open the file in any other editor?

fahdijbeli

yes .txt

I would to tell him yes

and I cant respond

and I don't have a backup

My the first person can tell me how to use the .txt file to rewrite the project lyx

David Carlisle

9:20 PM

@fahdijbeli well so you have your document then which is important thing, at worst you just need to re-install lyx. no backup I thought you said you could reaad the file?

@fahdijbeli how did you get the .txt?

fahdijbeli

just I copied the .lyx file and modifiy it to .txt

and I get all codes

the file its clear and I can see my text project

David Carlisle

@fahdijbeli so just copy it back to .lyx as a different name and open it in lyx, I would guess.

fahdijbeli

no the same error

i cannot open it again

I tryed even to convert it to .tex file and import it from lyx

and same error

David Carlisle

@fahdijbeli as I say I have never seen lyx but If I were you I'd be a lot happier having the text. It may be that your lyx application rather than the document is corrupted in some way you could try re-installing that or if you have access to another machine try your file with lyx in there, but don't trust my advice I have never seen lyx, just guessing....

fahdijbeli

clear i will try reinstall

hoping tht resolve the problem

thank you at all :)

David Carlisle

9:31 PM

@fahdijbeli keep a copy of the file somewhere safe....

fahdijbeli

yes ;)

Faheem Mitha

9:41 PM

@fahdijbeli You don't actually need to use Lyx. There are a number of editors that will work directly with LaTeX. And it's not really significantly harder, imo.

fahdijbeli

9:51 PM

@Fahee humm okay :)

Faheem Mitha

Personally, I don't see the appeal of Lyx. As someone said about Windows, it's like trying to thread a needle with boxing gloves.

fahdijbeli

lol

right

Faheem Mitha

10:28 PM

Per:

18

A: Command/macro name cannot include numbers and symbols

By the rules of TeX syntax, the "name" of a macro that starts with a \ (backslash) character must either consist of a single non-alphanumeric character. Some examples: \, (insert thin space), \\ (insert line break), \[ (open display math), and \) (close inline math) or contain only upperc...

TeX macro names can only consist of upper and lower case alphabets. So, if you I want a separator in a macro name, am I all out of options? E.g. harry_potter does not work, because of the _.

Joseph Wright

@FaheemMitha Depends on the cateogry code of _

@FaheemMitha For example, both expl3 and ConTeXt use _ in 'internal' macro names

Faheem Mitha

@JosephWright Does _ work in LaTeX?

It seems to think it should be in math mode, or something.

Can I easily fix it?

Joseph Wright

@FaheemMitha As I say, you can change the category code. Something like \catcode`\_=11\relax\mathcode`\_="8000\relax\begingroup\catcode`\_=\active\glob‌al\let_\sb\endgroup should work.

Faheem Mitha

@JosephWright Where, in the preamble? Won't that break stuff?

Joseph Wright

@FaheemMitha Probably :-)

Faheem Mitha

10:37 PM

@JosephWright :-\

So, pratically speaking, am I stick with alphabets?

Joseph Wright

@FaheemMitha Making _ a 'letter' is somewhat risky, making it an 'other' char outside math mode I'm happy with

@FaheemMitha As an 'end user', yes: this really is using lower-level TeX knowledge

Faheem Mitha

@JosephWright What does your code above do? In this particular use case, there is no math. It's just regular letters.

Joseph Wright

@FaheemMitha Makes _ a 'letter' but in math mode there is something called 'math active', which I've used to still allow it to make subscripts

Faheem Mitha

@JosephWright I see. Is that safe for non-math usage then?

David Carlisle

10:55 PM

@FaheemMitha not entirely, no.

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Ok. Maybe I'll just go with all alphabets then. CamelCase, here I come!

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha it means that foo_bar will typeset as that but if someone has used the normal markup of foo\_bar they will get undefined command \_bar error as that entire second half of the word will be seen as a multi-letter command name as _ is a letter

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Hmm. That's probably not an issue here. I'm not going to actually try to typeset the macro names. That's the issue, right? If I understood you correctly.

It's going to think \_bar is a command if I try to use it. Since _ has been redefined as a letter... Hmm, probably not an issue.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha well not macro names just anywhere that previously \_ was used it now has to be terminated by a non-letter

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Yes, I see. Probably best left alone, then.

I do use _ in text. And would it also interact badly with the underscore package, which I have used on occasion?

David Carlisle

11:00 PM

@FaheemMitha yes, obviously if it's a local document and you know you haven't use _ or \sum_0^n or any other such affected command then it's safe.

@FaheemMitha no idea what underscore package does, but almost certainly yes:-)

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Yes, as in it will interact badly?

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha yes that:-)

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Ah. Well, thank you for the heads up. I think I'll pass on the redefinition. Or whatever the correct term is.

David Carlisle

@FaheemMitha such settings can be useful for example if typing text from general sources not written specifically for tex I often make % normal punctuation rather than a comment. If you know there are no tex comments anyway it's easier than checking all the incoming text and replacing % by \% but you have to be pretty sure there really is no text expecting normal tex conventions, otherwise ...

Faheem Mitha

@DavidCarlisle Yes, I see.

David Carlisle

11:13 PM

@JosephWright where's @Will when you need him:-) vvv

@UlrikeFischer thanks now you say that, I've seen that before somewhere:-) yes geometry could do \normalsize but it's not clear that fontspec really should be leaving a 10pt baselinskip in the preamble. eu2enc.def could do \DeclareErrorFont{EU2}{lmr}{m}{n}{\baselineskip} for example. — David Carlisle 1 min ago

Ulrike Fischer

11:36 PM

@DavidCarlisle @JosephWright @Will. I don't think that setting the error font fontsize to 13.4pt in an 11pt document is the solution ... tex.stackexchange.com/questions/281836/…

An how do you copy comments to the chat?

Christian Hupfer

@UlrikeFischer Right Click on the time of the comment and copy link or whatever your browser says...

Ask @PauloCereda: He will activate the voting squad ;-) — Christian Hupfer Nov 22 at 12:42

David Carlisle

@UlrikeFischer oh flip you are right (although using the current font size rather than 10 would be good) can't see any particularly good reason why setting the error font should change the baselineskip at that point, so perhaps it's a latex bug (or at least odd feature)

Alan Munn

Does anyone have any success in allowing low reputation users to chat? I've tried to give access to someone but it still says he must have at least 20 rep.

Christian Hupfer

@AlanMunn Upvote him/her? ;-) No, I think only a mod can really push a low rep user to some room for chatting

Alan Munn

11:51 PM

That's not what the info says: